by Aiden Bates
And— Forget Mom, even. My entire family had been there. Everyone with their own connections and friendship groups and gossip networks, and I didn’t need to be the next hot topic at the Caldwell, Holton & Grant water cooler.
I glanced at the clock again, and it was still early enough that I could text Rome and not worry about being late for work. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I didn’t want to face Rome, really. Not even in tiny words on a small screen.
I typed a message out and deleted it. I needed to figure out what to say. After I’d deleted three messages, I decided just to be honest.
Think you got us in some deep shit.
Maybe I didn’t say everything I wanted to say, and there was no finesse or eloquence there at all, but he’d understand it. He’d also know I was feeling kind of mad about it. So, on reflection, the message was perfect. I pressed send and then waited, watching my screen.
I didn’t have to wait long before the dots appeared, showing me Rome was typing a reply.
Relax. Don’t stress—I’ll always pull us out of it. Trust me?
And he’d attached three grinning emojis. I smiled just looking at them. Then I sighed. Damnit. I was supposed to be mad.
But he was right—he’d never left me swimming in shit before, so I had to trust him. I’d trusted him always. Always would, too. I didn’t need to confirm that part about trusting him, though. I could maintain my illusion of grumpiness, even though I had to reply.
We can get together later.
My message was nice and neutral to leave him guessing as I swung my legs out of bed and headed to the bathroom. First stop: Tylenol, although my headache was probably more stress-related than anything to do with drink. Just remembering the look in Mom’s eyes added another note to the beat pounding through my skull.
After I’d showered, I wandered to my closet, but my usual clothes seemed too…ordinary, somehow. Like if I didn’t make extra effort, I’d somehow look heartbroken. And with Eli working just two classrooms down, I wanted to look sharp.
I didn’t want to consider why that seemed so important, but I definitely felt like I was putting my armor on, which was a weird way to feel around Eli, considering we’d been through so much together. After meeting at Elsdon, then moving onto college, our lives had followed pretty much the same path.
We both had a doctorate, and our eventual target had been teaching at university level, but the job gods hadn’t been kind, and first I’d returned to school to qualify to teach elementary level, then Eli had followed. And we’d both been lucky enough to land on our feet with jobs at Lakeshore First Elementary.
And I loved the kids I taught, but I couldn’t hand on heart say they were my first love.
I still yearned for the opportunity to teach people who were there by choice, who wanted to dig down into a subject and learn it whole-heartedly…or more than just learn. People who were curious and wanted to know more and investigate and explore a subject they were truly passionate about.
I wanted to share that with people, even while I appreciated the value of common core math. And if one more sick child spluttered all over me from about three inches away, I actually might start showing up in a decontamination suit.
I grinned as I thumbed through my options for the shirt I should wear—I needed Adrian and his eye for clothes. The kids wouldn’t care if I showed up dressed as a clown, but that didn’t help my Eli dilemma. I had to look like I meant business, even if that business was moving on and getting over him. I had to look strong. And if I looked so good that he regretted his choice…so be it.
Not that I’d ever told Eli how I felt—thank God. That would be a whole new level of embarrassing if he had any idea of that—like a circle of hell that no one else had discovered yet.
Nonetheless, I chose my clothes for the day with care, even running an iron over my shirt before I put it on. I’d almost forgotten I even owned an iron.
I fixed myself a coffee in the travel mug one of the students I’d taught last year had bought me. I tried not to open my coffee mug cupboard too often. It bulged at the seams, with too many thank you gifts to count. I usually just kept the travel mug on the draining board for easy access.
The rich aroma of coffee soon filled my kitchen and I whistled a little as late fall sunshine landed on the leaves on the trees outside, the reds and golds looking like fires in the sky.
I shrugged on my jacket and walked briskly to my car, my messenger bag of graded workbooks bumping against my ass as I went.
The morning passed pretty quickly in a blur of excited chatter about the weekend, a whistle-stop tour of why the days of the week are named as they are and who we named them after, and also a lesson on homophones.
We also had recess, several bouts of tears, one temper tantrum deserving of lunchtime detention, and an exhausted class teacher by the time lunchtime rolled around.
After I chased the last student out to the cafeteria, his paper lunch bag clutched tight in his hand, I slumped into my chair for a moment. I just needed five minutes to collect myself and slow the beating of my heart. All morning, I’d been aware of the second hand of the clock slowly ticking around to lunchbreak, to the time I’d arranged to meet Eli. And everything in me screamed out to take my lunchbreak at home, even if I’d only get there and turn right back around, eating my sandwiches in the car. Or run out to the deli near Saint’s work. Anything to avoid the inevitable awkwardness of having Eli tell me all about Benji. Or worse—ask me all about Rome.
I sighed. Both options were bad ones. I’d never wished harder for a time machine in my life. Something to give me longer than twenty minutes to gobble down a sandwich or scoot me right past my lunch with Eli.
But I had to it get over with. I scrubbed my hand through my hair, aware I probably looked a cross between a guy who just woke up and Einstein, but what did it matter? I taught elementary school. I got paid to turn up and share knowledge. Not like I modeled for GQ magazine on the side.
I spotted Eli the moment I walked through the staffroom door. His hands were moving through the air in demonstration of some story he was telling, and my throat tightened as affection filled my chest.
I’d loved him for so long. And I’d longed for him to love me back.
As Eli caught my eye, he finished up his story and excused himself. He approached me with a smile on his face and a plastic box of salad in his hand. Benji might have made that for him. I rarely saw Eli with anything vaguely healthy.
“What’s with the rabbit food?” I greeted him and nodded at his lunch.
“Oh. Wedding coming up, need to fit into my dress.” He grinned at me, and I smiled back, but it felt strained.
We moved to two chairs relegated to a corner of the room, usually taken by those with a particularly smelly lunch—eggs or tuna—and Eli began to talk as soon as we sat down.
“I’m really sad you didn’t trust me enough to tell me about Rome, dude.” And his eyes looked as sad as he’d suggested he felt.
But irritation welled in me rather than sympathy, and I fought to squelch it. “I could say the same.” I focused on unwrapping the aluminum foil from my leftover pizza. It had seemed a good idea when I grabbed it this morning, portable and low fuss, but my lunchtime reality was a greasy, stiff piece of tomato- and mozzarella-flavored cardboard.
His eyes widened, then he sighed. “Don’t be like that, Gray.” He dug around in his salad with the most ridiculous fork I’d ever seen. My third graders wouldn’t even use cutlery that small. Then he blew out another slow sigh. “Okay. You’re right. But I just didn’t know how to tell you.”
I frowned a little. He’d just gotten engaged, which certainly seemed like he’d had enough time to consider how to tell me. Then I remembered Rome, and the relationship we were supposedly in, and I coughed. “Yeah. It was the same for me. Just didn’t know what to say.”
Eli laughed and nudged my foot. “I kind of get it, you know? I mean, I never would’ve put you and Rom
e together, so I can guess that’s tricky news to break to people, right?”
“Huh?” I snapped my head up to meet his gaze. I almost didn’t know which part of his sentence to address first. Maybe not the tricky news part, because it wasn’t an issue I’d wrestled with. “What do you mean you wouldn’t have put Rome and me together?”
He laughed again. “C’mon, Gray. You know Rome, he’s—”
I narrowed my eyes, daring him to go on. But he was Eli, so of course he went on.
“I mean, shit, he’s just so Rome. He’s arrogant and critical and, let’s face it, he’s not exactly used to keeping his dick in his pants.”
I weighed his words. Where Eli saw arrogance, I saw confidence. And where he saw criticism, I saw perfectionism. The person Rome was hardest on was Rome. And his last point. Well, yeah. Rome partied hard, but I’d always seen that as none of my business.
I jutted my chin toward Eli. “And your point is?” I couldn’t let him see the way he spoke about Rome upset me. He’d go further just to get a rise out of me, and the fact Rome and I weren’t really together didn’t matter. He was one of my oldest friends, and I loved him.
He looked at me and sighed, the sound unhappy. “I just think you can do better, dude. A lot better.”
I battled through an afternoon of counting money and explaining how to make change from a dollar bill as students served each other from the fake toy store we’d set up, my attention elsewhere as Eli’s rancor about Rome chased through my head.
I fixed a smile on my face every time a student answered a question right, although one or two of them seemed to sense my unhappiness, as their willingness to sell to me at a deep discount increased. In the end, I laughed, cheered up by their generosity and kindness.
The urge to prove Eli wrong about Rome and I not being suited rose within me—what did he know, anyway?—and I tried to shove it aside, reminding myself we weren’t even really together. But knowing that truth didn’t help. Rome would be a great boyfriend. Much better than Benji… And I wanted to show Eli that.
I finished a couple of things up and packed my bag with fresh books to grade but looked up at a knock on my door. Eli leaned against the doorframe and grinned at me.
“Got a proposal for you, dude.”
I almost shook my head at the irony of his words. Not the same proposal he’d probably had for Benji “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I’ve had a great idea—a really good way for you to get to know Benji and catch up on everything you might think you’ve missed out on.”
“Yeah?” I knew I sounded wary, but often Eli’s great ideas weren’t actually all that good.
He hesitated for a moment then beat his fingers against the doorframe in a pseudo drumroll. “We should totally go on a double date!”
4
Rome
Paperwork. Fuck me. Whoever first thought up the concept of a paperless office was somewhere rolling in their neat little paperless grave while I was surrounded with an actual barricade of folders and files.
I groaned. While I actually liked the math and the thinking part of my job, I liked trying to persuade my board to take what they considered a leap of faith on a really good cause a whole lot less.
One of my favorite projects, a robotics company with a focus on prosthetics that we’d agreed to invest in recently needed extra funding, and I was knee-deep in the detail of trying to find that for them while also convincing the board we wouldn’t go bankrupt for the cause. So far, the board had rejected every new contract arrangement put before them for consideration.
And I was still being bombarded with emailed letters and pictures from family members the prosthetics had helped and—crucially—had yet to help. So that wasn’t tapping into my business brain. Whoever had put my name out there was possibly a marketing genius.
I shouldn’t have had pet projects, but I did. Every so often a company won me over based on the work it did rather than simply on the revenue it could generate. This one meant more to me than just numbers because I could actually see the people behind the cause. So, I had to build a contract renewal where the board could see potential return for Hayes Financial while also releasing enough funds to help all those people who needed what the robotics company could provide.
Perhaps… Just… Maybe… I massaged the percentage Hayes Financial would own just a little more interest in the prosthetics project, recalculated the length of time for the company to pull into profit, and suddenly the math worked. Potentially, the robotics company wouldn’t like it, but plan B was them also giving up more of things they’d patented previously, which I knew they hadn’t wanted on the table. And I believed in them so much and could see the potential of their tech in so many applications that I didn’t want to ask them for more than I needed to keep the board happy.
That sort of cheeky fuckery and grabbiness didn’t sit well with me, which meant I generally had to work hard to keep my soft heart to myself. I couldn’t let everyone in the business know that I believed in fairness and morals—I’d be eaten alive by people who believed in releasing their inner bastard with abandon.
I thought about it a moment, then added a personal note to the figures in the email, pointing out to the board the other ways we could make it work if we absolutely had to, but I also said why I’d more or less discounted the more mercenary ways. I talked about the unquantifiable value of goodwill attached to the nature of the project and also the other applications that might be possible for the technology we’d invested in.
The board usually went along with me if things were a decent enough compromise. Numbers really were my thing, and I’d been groomed to be a CEO by Dad, and I’d been mentored by the best in the business.
Because of that, my board listened to my instinct, especially when it married up with my sums.
I hit send, listening to the familiar sound as the email zoomed off into the ether.
My cell started to ring and began a slow vibration across the desk. I grinned. I shouldn’t really have assigned a special tone to Grady, but I just couldn’t help myself. He was cute and deserved to announce that to the world every time he called me.
Not too many people made me smile just by making my phone ring.
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
I stopped smiling when Grady sounded kinda nervous. “You okay?” I stood up from my desk and walked to my window. I had a corner office, which was pretty nice, and a great view of the lake. I leaned my forearm against the glass as I looked out at the clouds chasing across the sky.
“Yeah. Things are pretty good.” But he spoke hesitantly.
“Are you sure?” I kept my tone light and teasing, but what if he was backing out of our plan? “Have you changed your mind about…stuff?”
He coughed. “Uh…no. I… We…we have a double date.”
“Hell, no.” I laughed. “Shit… I’m long past going out on little double dates, Gray.”
“But Ro-man—”
Although Gray whined my name, I loved hearing him say it. “Say my name again,” I murmured, and he laughed.
“Be serious, Rome.”
I had been serious, but I laughed anyway. “You know your whining doesn’t work.” But I closed my eyes. I’d do anything for him, whining or not. Maybe not a double date, though.
“You got us into this mess.”
I could imagine his pointing finger of accusation, and I nearly laughed again, but I swallowed it. I didn’t want Gray to think I was laughing at him. That would hurt his feelings.
“You have to play your part.” His voice got smaller as he spoke, and I sighed.
“What’s really going on, Gray? Why did you agree? I mean…” I blew out a breath. “Why are you putting yourself through it?”
He was silent for so long I didn’t think he was going to say anything at all. “I didn’t want it to be obvious that I really have no interest in getting to know Benji.”
His words hurt my heart. It wasn’t me he w
anted to go with. It was just to impress Eli. Gray still had feelings for that dumb bastard.
“Please, Rome. Please?” He started talking again. “I have to show that my boyfriend is way better than Benji.”
I laughed, keeping it light again, but my heart sped up anyway, like it didn’t know—or didn’t care—this was all just pretend. “I’ll do it.” The words fell from my mouth, and I’d agreed with his dumbass plan before another thought entered my head, and I bit my lip to shut down the curse that followed.
He blew out a relieved breath, and I moved my phone away from my ear at the strength of it. “Thanks, Rome. You won’t regret it, I swear.”
I kind of already did. I couldn’t afford to get too close, because I had a feeling I was dancing with a very hot flame, and I didn’t want to get burned.
“How long do you think we’ll have to pretend?”
I almost didn’t hear Gray’s question, but I shook my head and refocused, running the words back through my head until they made sense. Guilt reached through me, and I shivered. I was being unfair, taking advantage of Grady, holding him close to me.
But maybe it would be okay to be selfish—just this once, because I was also protecting him, buffering from whatever damage Eli would inflict.
“It will only be a few weeks,” I assured him as I clamped down on the tiny pang of regret.
“Yeah.” The word was almost like a sigh, and I smiled.
“Okay, bud? Let me know where and when.” I used my brightest voice. Talking to Grady about this hurt as much as it felt good.
“Sure thing. Thanks, Rome.”
“No problem.” I hung up. I rarely said goodbye. Life was too short for those.
